NCAA puts an end to satellite football camps

The NCAA Division I Council voted Friday to close a loophole that has allowed Football Bowl Subdivision coaches, most infamously Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, to skirt geographical restrictions on where programs can conduct camps and clinics.

During its April meetings in Indianapolis, the Council adopted a new rule put forth by the Atlantic Coast Conference — Proposal No. 2015-59-FBS.

The new rule limits camps and clinics for FBS programs to “on campus or in the facilities regularly used” for practice or competition.

It also specifies that an institution’s coaching staff or non-coaching staff members with football-specific responsibilities may only be employed at camps and clinics owned and operated by the school.

The new legislation, which ends the practice of coaches serving as a guest instructors at camps outside the permitted 50-mile radius from campus, are in line with preexisting restrictions on men’s basketball.

The Southeastern Conference, which along with the ACC already barred its coaches from participating in such so-called “satellite camps,” had put forth a similar proposal.

If the new rule hadn’t passed, the SEC and ACC were prepared to lift their restrictions.

Missouri coach Barry Odom told The Star earlier this week that his staff was preparing to join the satellite camp free-for-all if the NCAA had not banned them. Most other SEC and ACC coaches also were prepared to enter the fray.

“We would have tried to get in as many states that we recruit that we could have,” Odom said Friday after a spring practice at Memorial Stadium. “There were so many schools reaching out to want to pair up together. We had some things that we felt like we were going to do pretty strongly and then, within the last 48 hours, it got a little crazy with people wanting to pair up all over the place.”

The SEC and ACC supported the new legislation along with the Big 12, Pac-12, Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences, according to ESPN. The Big Ten, American Athletic, Conference USA and Mid-American Conferences voted to keep the loophole.

Odom said the Tigers had 10 satellite camps set up and were weighing a few others. He declined to address specifics other than to confirm there were “up to 15 schools that had communicated” on putting together a mega-camp in Atlanta.

Instead, not much changes now for Odom and his staff, which will have two 15-day windows in June or July to stage its camps and clinics on campus.

“I’m excited to get as many prospects as we can on our campus,” Odom said. “We’ll put on a great camp. It’s been awesome. The camps that we have had here, we’ve found players. I would expect this summer to be the best camp series we’ve ever put on.”

He added, “We’ll do a great job getting kids on our campus and I’m excited about that, because they’ll get to see us in our environment and they get to see what Missouri’s about.”

Odom equivocated when asked if he supported such camps, saying he would abide by the SEC’s governance, but he said that applauded the decision in at least one respect.

“You’ve got to look at the quality of life for recruits and prospects,” Odom said. “If they’re going to 18 camps during the summer, if I’m a high school coach, I’m not real excited about that.”

Former Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said it’s a quality-of-life issue for coaching staffs as well.

“The reason they had the rule to begin with was so no cheating would be going on, but it’s also not a good quality of life for coaches if they’ve got to keep going out all over the country,” Pinkel said. “They travel and are not home a lot anyway.”

▪ The NCAA Division I Council approved a proposal to clarify academic integrity rules and make clearer when the NCAA should be involved in a case of academic misconduct involving athletes. The council tabled a proposal that would allow NCAA championship events to be held in states that permit gambling on college sports.

The Council also dropped its limits on electronic communication with recruits in football, cross country, track and field and swimming and diving.

This story was originally published April 8, 2016 at 10:00 PM with the headline "NCAA puts an end to satellite football camps."